The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

by Hyeonseo Lee

  Her name was Miss Ma. On the way there, she asked me many questions. I felt she was trying to befriend me. I told her I was from Shenyang and that my ‘father’ owned a trading company that did business with South Korea. She expressed surprise that a girl from such a family would want a job in a hair salon. I tried to give the impression I was rebelling.

  I noticed that Miss Ma’s nails were painted a cyclamen purple, which I thought rather far out for a woman her age, and she wore a thin gold trace chain around her ankle.

  We arrived at a drab suburb of shops and apartments. It looked more like Changbai than Shenyang. The hair salon was unlike any beauty parlour I had known. The left side was lined with black leather sofas and on the right were a half-dozen barber’s chairs facing large mirrors. Two of the chairs were occupied by middle-aged men having their hair shampooed.

  This is a men’s hair salon?

  Another man of about fifty was sprawled on one of the sofas reading a newspaper and smoking. He tapped his ash into a paper cup. I noticed something peeping above his shirt collar: the blue head of a serpent tattooed on his neck. Miss Ma greeted him and his eyes followed me without smiling. Without my needing to be told I knew this man was the boss.

  Miss Ma led me down into the basement and pointed out six small ‘therapy’ rooms with smoked-glass doors. She told me this was where I would be working. Her tone was less friendly now. There was a stale yellow light. It smelled of damp and male sweat. She opened the door to one of the rooms, and I heard myself gasp.

  Inside, lit only by a tea light, a young woman in a skimpy slip was sitting beside a man lying on a futon on his stomach. He was naked but for a white towel around his waist. Coming from prudish North Korea, I had never been in an environment where men and women mingled naked, let alone touched each other. She was massaging one of his arms.

  What is this place?

  ‘Here, why don’t you massage the other arm?’ the girl said.

  Without another word Miss Ma closed the door and left.

  I didn’t even know what massage was for, let alone how to give one. The man was very fat and shining with sweat, as if he’d just come out of a sauna. In the dim light he looked like some sea mammal that had washed ashore and begun to rot. I touched him with extreme reluctance. I couldn’t see his face. After a few seconds, he said: ‘Who’s this? She’s hopeless.’

  ‘She’s new,’ my co-worker said. ‘We’re training her.’

  The girl gave me an imploring look, as if I was getting her into trouble. She was about my own age, small and pretty, but with a damaged look in her eyes.

  After a while the man heaved himself up, took a good look at me, and invited both of us to join him in a karaoke bar a short drive away.

  ‘I don’t think we’re allowed to do that,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ my co-worker laughed. ‘Of course we are.’

  Upstairs, the man with the blue serpent tattoo stood to open the glass doors for us, and flagged down a taxi.

  I hadn’t eaten anything and my stomach was churning with nerves. I was worried that events were going to take an even weirder turn in the karaoke bar, but the fat man lost interest in me after I twice declined an alcoholic drink. It seemed to deflate whatever plans he had for a night with two girls. My co-worker, however, joined him in several shots of soju. I sang a few Chinese songs. He sang some himself. By the time we took a taxi back it was dark.

  My co-worker took me to a building at the back of the hair salon. We climbed several flights of narrow stairs to a door with multiple locks. She opened it, turned on the light, and I saw the filthiest room I had seen in my life. In the corner something scuttled and vanished. Five bunk beds were crammed into a tiny space. Ten girls were living here. It stank of body odour and drains. A line of drying panties was strung between bunks; clothes were strewn across the beds. I peered into the bathroom, and pressed my hand to my nose and mouth.

  This is what I’ve escaped to?

  I was very tired by now, and weak from having eaten nothing but a few bar snacks. I said: ‘If it’s all right with you, I’ll stay tonight because it’s late. But I’ll leave in the morning. I don’t think I’m going to take this job.’

  I’ll never forget the look that came into the girl’s eyes. I’d seen it many times in North Korea. She was afraid.

  ‘This is not the kind of place you can just leave,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘They won’t let you.’

  I lay awake all night on a stained mattress. I was too scared to sleep. It was very humid and the room had no ventilation. Was this my fate as an illegal? To live in places like this? How could they make me stay against my will? They couldn’t chain me. I was trying to make sense of the fear in my co-worker’s eyes, and the answer presented itself. They’ll harm me if I try to leave.

  I had been a complete fool. Miss Ma had guessed I was an illegal the moment she saw me.

  The woman had tricked me to get me here. I would need to employ the same tactic to leave. I would have to trick her back.

  The next morning, the other beds were still empty. Whoever they belonged to had slept elsewhere. My co-worker and I went to the salon. I was relieved to see that the brute with the blue serpent tattoo was not there. Miss Ma was sitting behind the cash register, looking gaudily dolled up.

  I walked towards her. I needed to put on an act, and a good one.

  ‘We had such a time at the karaoke,’ I said. I held my hand to my head as if I had a hangover, and gave a look of comic mock-despair.

  ‘Good.’ She gave a small, sour smile. ‘That’s what you’re here for. How much did the gentleman tip you?’

  He hadn’t given me anything. ‘The money’s in my jeans in the dorm,’ I said. ‘I was in no state to count it last night.’

  ‘Never leave money there. Always bring it straight here.’

  ‘Sure. Sorry. When do I meet the other girls?’

  ‘They’ll be here when they’re ready.’

  I crossed my fingers for luck. ‘Before it gets busy, I’m going to pop back to Xita and get my things.’

  Her eyes hardened. All of yesterday’s friendliness had gone. ‘What do you need? I will provide it.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I laughed, ‘I wouldn’t ask you to provide a guitar. That’s all I want to fetch, and some personal photos. The guitar won’t get in the way. In fact, everything will fit underneath the bunk.’

  I pretended to worry that she thought my stuff would take up too much space.

  ‘You’ll be late for your first booking if you go anywhere.’

  She’s hesitating.

  ‘I’ll make up for it later with overtime, and I won’t waste your money on a taxi,’ I said. ‘I’ll go by bus and pay for it myself. I’ll be back here by ten.’

  She huffed and puffed. She was annoyed now, and glanced toward the window. I wondered if she was looking for the man with the blue serpent tattoo. ‘Be quick. We’re fully booked today.’

  ‘Understood,’ I said, giving her a cheery salute, as if to say, You’re the boss.

  I walked out of the glass doors.

  When I was around the corner and out of sight I ran along the sidewalk toward the cab rank where we’d been dropped off the previous night after the karaoke.

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  The driver of the first free cab was leaning against his car and talking to the man with the blue serpent tattoo, who had a newspaper under his arm. I turned on my heels and walked back the way I had come, hoping he had not seen me. This meant that I had to walk back past the glass front of the hair salon. If Miss Ma saw me she would know I was not going to the bus stop. I hung back for a moment and tried to walk past with some other people, as if I was with them. I was halfway past the salon when I heard her shout from inside: ‘Hey!’

  I ran – down one street after another. I didn’t know where I was. When I saw the amber light of a free cab coming toward me I flagged it do
wn like a madwoman.

  I jumped in, and sank low into the back seat. This time there was no hesitation. ‘Xita. Go, go, go.’

  Chapter 24

  Guilt call

  I had not slept and had hardly eaten in thirty-six hours, running on pure adrenalin. I had no possessions. My bag had been left behind in the dorm. In the cab I counted the last of the cash in my wallet. It was enough to pay the driver and buy some fried noodles at a market stall. After that, I was in serious trouble. I had to find a job today.

  Back in Koreatown, I decided to try the restaurants, which seemed a safer option than the casual job market. After walking into a dozen of them to ask for work, and having no luck, I caught sight of my reflection in a window. I looked hollow-eyed, hungry and desperate. Just a yard from my face, however, was a notice in Korean attached to the inside of the glass. It was advertising for waitresses. I was in front of a restaurant called Gyeong-hwoi-ru, a large and busy establishment, with about thirty round tables and at least ten waitresses I could see gliding about in the traditional chima jeogori dress. The lunchtime rush was on: huge trays of hot food going in one direction, empty plates in the other. I composed myself, and went in.

  ‘I want to be a waitress,’ I said to the lady at the drinks counter who looked like she might be the manager. She wore formal business clothes.

  ‘You’re a student looking for vacation work?’

  ‘No, I’d like a full-time job.’

  She fetched a form and a pen. ‘Name?’

  ‘Jang Soon-hyang,’ I said, using the name from the identity Geun-soo’s family had obtained for me. ‘I’m Korean-Chinese. From Yanbian.’

  There was a pause as she wrote this down, and I felt my stomach turn to water. It had not occurred to me till now that I would need ID to find work. If her next question was to ask for my ID, the game was up.

  She seemed to spend a long time filling out the form. ‘I can give you a job. We have a dormitory for workers who need it. It’s two minutes away.’

  I felt relief wash over me. Nowhere in the world could be as squalid as the dorm I’d just come from.

  ‘When can you start?’

  ‘Today,’ I said, tapping the counter in a show of eagerness.

  The woman gave me a curious look. ‘Isn’t there something you’d like to know?’

  You don’t need to see any ID? ‘No, sounds great.’

  ‘You’re not interested in your pay?’

  I’d been so desperate for a lifeline that I had not asked the most basic question.

  ‘It’s three hundred and fifty yuan a month,’ she said. The equivalent of about forty US dollars.

  In North Korea, I could survive six months on a sum like that. It seemed a generous wage to me.

  The lady smiled. ‘And meals are free.’

  My first day as a waitress in the Gyeong-hwoi-ru Korean Restaurant nearly ended in catastrophe. My very first customers were a table of Han Chinese businessmen in suits. One of them asked me for the check, and some chewing gum.

  I brought them to him.

  ‘What’s this?’ He looked up at me.

  I sensed abuse coming. I’d already noticed this was common in restaurants here. Some people thought that if they were spending money they had the right to be as rude as they liked.

  ‘I didn’t ask for this.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. You asked for gum?’

  ‘I said cigarette, not gum.’ His eyes narrowed.

  He must have said the Mandarin word xiang yan (cigarette) but I’d heard kou xiang tang (gum). The lady manager came over to us.

  ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ the man said, pointing at me in front of his colleagues. ‘She’s from North Korea.’

  The colour drained from my face.

  ‘She’s from Yanbian,’ the manager said softly. ‘She didn’t catch your meaning.’

  ‘Bullshit. People her age from Yanbian speak Mandarin perfectly well these days. She didn’t understand me. She’s North Korean.’

  ‘She’s Korean-Chinese,’ the manager said, with a firm smile. ‘I do apologize for the mistake. Let me bring you each a packet of cigarettes, with our compliments.’

  This seemed to calm him down and he dropped the matter.

  Later the manager told me that some customers behaved like pigs in order to get something for free. She told me not to feel upset.

  She had not suspected that the man was right.

  I fell into a routine. I arrived for work at 8.30 a.m. to set tables, fill salt shakers and soy sauce bottles, and waited on tables all day until the last customers left at 10 p.m. The restaurant was open every day and the waitresses got one day off each month. It was hard work, but I didn’t mind. I was proud that I’d solved my problem by myself, even if my situation was still far from secure. For the first time in my life I had some independence. I had some money of my own. My Mandarin improved rapidly. I returned to the dorm after work each evening so exhausted that I’d drop off straight away. I got used to the nightmares. They still repeated, on an endless loop, night after night.

  The four waitresses who shared the dorm were friendly and talkative, but I was guarded about what I revealed, especially to the two who were from Yanbian. One slip, and they might easily guess the truth about me. Despite this, one of these girls intrigued me, and we became friends. Her name was Ji-woo. She was putting herself through a business studies degree at Dongbei University in Shenyang, and paying her way with waitressing. This impressed me so much. The only other young person I’d met in China who’d been through higher education was Geun-soo, but he’d been such an indifferent student he couldn’t even describe for me what he’d studied. Ji-woo was fun and intelligent, and like me, loved fashion. I wanted to learn what she was learning about business models, but her textbooks seemed so difficult. Several times I was tempted to tell her my secret, but each time a warning voice in my head said, Don’t.

  I was getting used to another new name. Ji-hae, Min-young, Mi-ran were behind me. My name was now Soon-hyang and I wore it like a new bud.

  After a few months waiting tables, I was assigned to the cash register. I was good at handling money. My monthly wage was now 500 yuan ($60). My goal was to save enough for the journey to Changbai. From there I would try to make contact with my mother and Min-ho.

  I was enjoying the job. The people who came to the restaurant fascinated me. I found myself observing customers, trying to guess their stories. I started to see that the world was far less conventional than I’d ever imagined in North Korea. People were complex and diverse. Many lifestyles and choices were possible.

  As my life became more settled, the memory of how I’d run away from my uncle and aunt’s troubled me. I’d fled without even leaving them a note. They had been kind to me. How could I have been so disrespectful? I realized that a note would have required explaining my feelings, and I was not accustomed to doing that. Few North Koreans are.

  After about six months, in December 2000, I called them from a street phone. Aunt Sang-hee answered. ‘Mi-ran,’ she said in a gasp. Even she had forgotten my real name. Once she’d got over her shock I could hear the conflict in her voice, between relief, concern for me, and wounded pride.

  ‘You humiliated us,’ she said. ‘You’re our family. Running away like that made us all look bad.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I couldn’t go through with it.’

  She wanted to know where I was. I told her I was waitressing and doing fine. She invited me to visit, but I sensed that the hurt I had caused was still raw. I would leave it a while.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what happened to Geun-soo?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘You must call the family to apologize.’

  I brooded about this for two days, but I knew I had to do it. Several times I started punching in the number only for my courage to fail me at the last second. Finally, I made the call. Mrs Jang answered. I couldn’t talk at first. My mouth had gone dr
y. She was about to hang up when I said: ‘It’s Mi-ran.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ There was a long pause. ‘Where are you?’

  I could picture her gesturing furiously to the sisters. It’s her.

  I thought she would be hissing with fury, but her voice was cool and controlled. To my great surprise she said: ‘Please come back, Mi-ran. For my son’s sake. He’s not the same. He’s been very depressed since you left.’

  Geun-soo is depressed over me? ‘Could I talk to him?’

  He was weeping when he came to the phone. He sounded drunk and couldn’t form his words properly.

  ‘Please come back,’ he said. ‘I still have the honeymoon tickets. We can go away.’

  These were the first strong sentiments I’d ever heard from him. I felt very sorry for him, and dismayed. I’d had to abandon him before he was able to figure out how he felt about me. But it was too late. I could not go back. The clearest desire in my mind was to reconnect with my family. He and his mother would be a barrier to that.

  I kept saying over and over how sorry I was. I had humiliated him and insulted his family.

  When the call ended, I slumped against the wall next to the pay phone and buried my face in my hands. I had brought great misfortune upon Geun-soo.

  Our Respected Father Leader commands that we respect our elders and honour our families. I have noticed that Comrade Mi-ran does nothing but hurt the people closest to her. Would she agree that she is a person of bad character?

  Yes. That’s what I was. A bad person.

  I had no one to talk to, no one who might have told me that, for my own wellbeing, the choice I had made did not make me bad.

  Instead, this scathing self-assessment sank in, and a part of me turned cold. When I was crying in my uncle’s apartment, missing my mother, my heart was there. But now something inside me had hardened and the tears had stopped.

  I no longer liked myself.

  I swore that I would do penance for the harm I had done Geun-soo. For weeks I thought about how I might do this. In the end, I decided that my punishment would be never to marry. I would not add to the hurt and insult I had caused him by marrying someone else.